Sunday

Saturday

Our Q is obsessed with basketball. Which statement has nothing to do with this skirt. The skirt was my doing...a lark, a laugh. She would never have chosen it herself. And yet, always game, she just accepted it.But tell me...does it not make the most delicious contrast with her dribbling style?It's not just basketball (although that is, at present, her sport of choice) she loves all types of balls. Soccer, I think, would be her second choice, and she has quite the accurate footwork already!Releasing a ball that had become stuck under the tulle of her skirts.But here's the really funny part: we have no idea where she got it. Neither my husband nor I play any team sports - we are both strictly the running/skiing/hiking/snowboarding types. Furthermore, we don't have cable, and we don't watch sports of any kind, live or televised. So...she can't have seen it on TV. It is just - pure and simple - her. This is one of her facets. It fascinates me.......although it also frightens me, because I have no talent whatsoever for ball sports, and couldn't throw in a straight line if my life depended on it. Q is already a better shot at 20 months of life than I am after years of...OK, well, I never really practiced. But you get the picture.

Friday

This is an old one, done from a trip we took way back when I was first learning to SCUBA dive. This was a tiny island in a string of tiny island outside of the barrier reef off the coast of Belize. You could walk from one side of the island to the other in a matter of a few minutes. The lodgings were thatch-roofed circular huts on stilts. There was a hurricane on the day we were supposed to leave, and the Boston Whaler that served as a taxi to and from shore was not up to the 12-foot waves. We ended up having to hitch a ride from a very large sailboat which had anchored near the shore of our island, and by wild coincidence, two of the people on the sailboat wound up hailing from Woodstock, my hometown, and knowing some of my friends. Bizarre! It was a lovely ride back to the coast on that large sailing ship, and the 12-foot waves seemed minimal under the hull of that vessel.

Small teaser-style announcement: since our daughter's adoption last summer, my wait-list for portraits and illustrations has been on hold due to a crippling lack of time, and some big jobs that I've been working on for the past year. By late June, however, I expect to be able to announce a change in status for my studio, and quite possibly an Etsy shop featuring available prints! Stay tuned for more news in the near future, both here and at my illustration site.

A few shots from an afternoon stroll through old North Denver...These parts of town make me feel like I could be back in the Gatsby era, like somewhere in a more affluent part of town, people might be having parties on expansive lawns, fairy light flickering in the manicured hedges, lounging around in drop-waist dresses and cloche hats.

Thursday

Well, it's not easy to get good photos of a 20-month-old. Especially one as athletic as ours. She has lately discovered an obsession with running (no surprise given her affinity for sports) which makes it particularly hard to capture photos of her that are not simply a blur. It takes some maneuvering. So...I have attempted (with only partial success) to take some pictures of her in her new linensarouels by L'atelier de Marie et Rose-Alice. They are perfect on her, and so cute! They're also conducive to her activity, being roomy, cool and allowing for plenty of running.I'm still loving mine, as well...especially as the weather grows hotter here on the Front Range of the Rockies.I had the most luck when plonking her down on her special chair, which is too tall for her to climb down from on her own. This way, she's a captive to my lens...it is not, however, the best way to capture the beauty of these pants.Sarouels in motion. They're awfully comfortable, very airy, and practically weightless...next best thing to that wonderful kaftan I've been fond of this summer.Finally, I lifted her feet off the ground for a moment - thus capturing, at least for a split second, the wonderful shape of this design.Then we had to move on to something she really enjoys: measuring. She loves to be measured. And no wonder, since she grows at a preternatural rate. She equates measuring with having a book set atop her head, which is funny. This morning, I measured her on an actual chart, and she was 34", which is (according to the chart) a 2T size. She will not be 2 years old until late August. Yup, the kid is growing at a furious rate.